


Tracing Scars

by kyanve



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Kuron is Shiro (Voltron)'s Clone, M/M, The rest of the cast is there but way more briefly, VLD Halloween Exchange, character injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 04:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12573364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyanve/pseuds/kyanve
Summary: VLD Halloween Exchange fic (Trick Prompt) for blue_gremlin on Tumblr!Finding Shiro was something important put back into place - at least, that's what Keith thought at first.But there were little things off.  A running tally of little things off, and then a few that were not so little.The worst part is that "Shiro" didn't even seem to realize what was wrong, only that something was definitely wrong, and Keith was trying desperately to avoid giving him an answer.





	Tracing Scars

Shiro had been gone for months. Him being a disoriented mess was expected. As soon as they’d gotten him out of the fighter, he’d barely managed to stagger a few steps and had to be helped to the infirmary; Keith had stayed close by to support him, growling at Hunk for a moment without thinking when he’d moved to take over.

Hunk had just stepped back, hands raised, and moved to Shiro’s other side to help.

He was out for a while, although according to Coran the worst of it was mostly just the toll taken by spending a week in a small fighter that hadn’t been meant to be used long-range; it’d been a miracle that he’d survived without supplies for as long as he had. 

Keith stayed in the infirmary the whole time, unwilling to leave. The others were in and out checking up on Shiro, a few words back and forth every time; Pidge rambling off on her projects and figuring out new ways to track Imperial movements as a distraction that seemed to be as much for her benefit as Keith’s, Lance managing a few weak bad jokes occasionally but mostly just staying in awkward silence with sporadic worried questions, Hunk coming in insisting on taking over for Coran so the older man could rest while also getting an excuse to make sure Keith was eating. Allura would wander down to sit, often just staying in shared worried silence without much said; when she wasn’t there, one of the mice often was, and Keith was getting used to having something small and furry curled up against his neck or otherwise nearby.

He was occasionally circling back to how close it’d been. If Black hadn’t suddenly picked up on something and given him the confused mental nudge with something on the map. If they’d been a little further away. Part of him wanted to believe that it was like what’d happened with Red; that the distance didn’t matter, Black would’ve known and made sure they got there no matter what.

It didn’t banish the specter of what had almost happened; how close he’d come to losing Shiro without even knowing it, dehydration and loss of air somewhere in the middle of empty space. 

It wasn’t something the Castle could fix as easily as injuries; once he was more stable there were a few hours where he was in the infirmary, tired and out of it, occasionally needing a minute to register that he was being spoken to, wrapped around some kind of broth. 

Keith hovered closer, and Shiro listed over to lean on him; it felt like a moment where something broke, that the entire hanging awful mass of fears and things to worry about was starting to be over. Shiro was back on the castle, whole and would be okay; he looked fried and displaced, but Shiro was starting to lapse into the kind of half-awake relief that came with being somewhere safe.

Keith leaned into it, doing as best as he could to curl around Shiro and cling close without compromising being a support or jarring Shiro’s mug of broth, and buried his face in Shiro’s shoulder and the mess of overgrown hair with a faint, inadvertent whine from deep in his chest. 

 

Knowing Shiro he was going to have to deal with one of his dumb awful jokes, and it’d either be about dying or about how much it apparently took to kill him, or how hard the universe kept trying and failing, because it was Shiro, and he was always so busy worrying about being able to look out for everyone else that he had a hard time admitting when he wasn’t okay even if it was obvious. 

Shiro reached up to rest the metal hand on Keith’s head gently. “It’s a good thing you found me. I’d run out of anything I could do there.”

Keith’s frazzled response died for a moment. He was used to having to prompt a little, or at least deal with Shiro framing it as a joke. 

He gave Shiro a squeeze. “We came as soon as the Black Lion found you. If I’d had any clue before that…”

Shiro wasn’t trying to play it off, and that made him all the more worried about what Shiro had just been through besides being stuck in a dying fighter for a week; even Haggar ripping open his side and getting separated from everyone hadn’t been enough to break through that habit.

“Hey, it’s okay. You got there, I’m here. That’s what matters, right?”

He nodded into Shiro’s neck and shoulder, trying not to inhale bits of hair. 

He stayed curled there for a while, until Shiro had finished the broth, Coran had come back to do a couple last checks, and Shiro was starting to get restless about staying in the infirmary.

Still wobbly on his feet, but restless about staying there.

Keith rolled his eyes and followed behind when Shiro decided it was time to at least get back to his room to rest; Shiro made it most of the way to the door before his balance wobbled.

Keith just sighed and ducked in with a hand offered.

Shiro didn’t actually need a lot of help on the way back, but he was definitely wobbly and more tired again when they made it to his room. The first thing he did on reaching it was stumble forward to flop into the bed face first, arms wrapped haphazardly around the pillow and face buried into it with a muffled groan.

Whatever had happened, Shiro was back. They could deal with the rest.

He sat down on the side of the bed, reaching over to rest a hand on Shiro’s shoulder and give a gentle squeeze. “It’s good to have you back.”

Shiro gave a quiet hum, muffled into the pillow, and then reached up to rest the metal hand on Keith’s wrist for a moment before he tugged, just enough to pull Keith off balance if he went along with it. Keith made an awkward noise of protest but let himself get tugged over, flopping gracelessly over into the bed. Shiro only shifted enough to swap curling around him for the pillow like the world’s laziest bony octopus. “I’m lucky to have you,” he mumbled, face against Keith’s shoulder and hair going everywhere. 

The moment off wasn’t enough to register yet around having close contact again, and Keith shifted to get more comfortable and try to tug the blanket up over without disturbing Shiro; the missed cue was worrying, but he also knew that last time Shiro had come out of it with holes in his memory that had been slow to recover. 

“They were trying to rearrange the inside of your head again, weren’t they.” The effort with the blanket only half worked, and after a bit of that he just started trying to brush Shiro’s hair out of the way, detangling it from where it’d gotten caught between them.

“Mmm.” Shiro nodded into his shoulder. “You know how it goes. Managed to get loose before it got too bad, at least.” His eyes were closed, mumbling and already half asleep.

“Yeah. We’ve got plenty of time to sort it out.” 

He dozed off not long after Shiro. He wasn’t sure how long it’d been since he’d slept soundly; for the first time in a long time most of the weights and worries were at least where they felt SOLVABLE, like he honestly could rest and things would work out. 

Keith drifted awake to the unfamiliar sensation of spitting out long hair that’d gotten in his face to a human blanket, Shiro draped heavily over him with his face buried in Keith’s chest. The growth of the months Shiro had been missing had spread out and gotten into everything again as they’d shifted in their sleep. Keith only had one hand free, the other one stuck between him and Shiro; rather than struggle with that and wake Shiro up, he just settled for moving the errant hair out of the way again before running fingers through it idly. 

It was a part of the world that’d been missing that’d finally moved back into place. 

Shiro shifted after a while, and then there was enough stirring and vague tired noises to tip off that he was awake; he did barely move enough for Keith to get his other hand free. He shifted it to drape over Shiro’s shoulder, still petting through the longer hair. “Feeling better?”

“Mmhm.” Shiro seemed content to stay where he was, not moving, draped over Keith.

Shiro seemed comfortable enough; he remembered what it’d been like before with the memory holes - Shiro remembering some dumb thing that’d happened at the Garrison, but how it’d taken weeks for Shiro to remember how they’d first met; how they’d hit things that were almost replays of old conversations that didn’t go the same as they had before because of how they’d both changed and the situation had changed. Depending on how much the Galra had tried, there was no telling how much he did or didn’t remember, how much would still be comfortable. 

“How much do you remember?” There were some holes, there had to be for him to trip over the callback earlier, and they’d only gotten past nervous circling and a number of other worries on both sides over a relationship late in everything. 

Having to go through everything again was a fear itself, but … well, if he had to go through everything again, he’d go through everything again, and he’d rather know they were starting over than just assume Shiro remembered and end up with one or both of them hurt.

Shiro gave a quiet chuckle. “Enough.” 

And that was a hand slipped under his shirt, catching him off guard enough for a small, stifled yelp and startling him out of his thoughts just before lips brushed against his neck. 

“Shiro!” slipped out in pitched complaint as he squirmed, almost elbowing Shiro in the mock protest before he relaxed, keeping Shiro’s hair out of the way with one hand and going back to old habit tracing Shiro’s scars with the other while Shiro was likely leaving marks on his neck.

It was a comfortable, warm escape from everything that’d been going on, enough that the nagging sense something was off didn’t quite click at first. 

For how much he was taking lead, Keith was used to a little more teeth; that could be chalked up to everything that’d happened and Shiro finding his footing again - before Shiro had been more tentative and prone to being almost over-careful at first, if he was rattled then no matter how much he tried to cover it that’d probably slip, even if it wasn’t lapsing far.

By this point, though, Keith knew Shiro’s scars. Scars where there hadn’t been any before was expected.

Scars that had been there being shaped different was wrong, especially when some parts were smaller than they’d been before.

Smaller scars that had been there being completely gone was definitely wrong.

The Black Lion only barely picking up on “Shiro” and being confused when she did find him, no black humor jokes, mumbling through admitting they’d been messing with his head again instead of going uncomfortable and dodging it or redirecting, missing the callback.

Missing scars.

He tensed, throat tight with a sudden spike of panic - 

If this wasn’t Shiro, if the Galra were up to something and he was literally in bed with someone he didn’t know that was probably there as a trap. 

“Shiro” stopped a beat after he froze, sitting up and shifting back away from him a little, confused and worried. “Something wrong?”

It took a couple beats and a couple breaths for it to sink in; he was being given space, and whether it was Shiro or not, they were at least respecting that he’d suddenly been much less okay with things. 

“I’m-“ Trying to figure out if you’re you or some kind of bizarro Galra clone. Right. Not saying that. “I’m not sure. It’s - been a Hell of a few months, I just - need some time. I think.” 

Shiro - not-Shiro - he wasn’t sure either way - nodded, expression sobered. 

Now he was torn between rattled nerves, wanting to stay close to Shiro for stability, and not even being sure he was actually dealing with Shiro, and not sure how to react either way. “Sorry. I’ll figure it out.” 

****************

Whatever was going on, he’d been given space and there was a definite period where Shiro-or-not had been careful of giving him some space while cleaning up. 

The tally of “close but off” grew afterwards. The Black Lion didn’t respond at all to “Shiro”.

His scars were different, and Keith couldn’t come up with an earthly reason why the Galra would do that - it wasn’t like anybody but him would know them well enough to even notice, so it didn’t seem like a great way to sow paranoia in the team. 

The more disconcerting part was that it didn’t seem like there were holes per se; as long as he kept it general, “Shiro” could keep up with mention of past events perfectly fine, better than he had before when they’d gotten him back.

Actually that was part of what was bothering Keith; he’d learned all the little signs that a year in the Hellish imprisonment and arenas and experimentation was catching up to Shiro and chewing on him, the way Shiro’s jaw and expression shifted when he was trying to cover it to focus on what he was doing, the sort of queasy look if the wrong thing got brought up when things were quiet and Shiro wasn’t expecting it, the freezes and disoriented spans when something hit all the wrong nerves too hard unexpectedly. 

He was bracing for them, expecting to see them worse now that Shiro’d been apparently captured and experimented on again, but the discomfited squirm that came up occasionally wasn’t any of the past mannerisms. 

He could only really think of one way to test what was bothering him there, and if he was wrong, he’d be a complete asshole that would need to do a lot to make it up to Shiro…

But if he was right, they had bigger problems, because while he could kind of manage some twisted logic paths to why the Galra might do things that’d change Shiro’s scars, there was no earthly reason the Galra would care and no good explanation for him suddenly not having any of the old stronger reactions to what they’d done to him.

Shiro at least kept to enough routines that he could easily make sure he was talking without any of the others around; it was more risky but it also meant he wouldn’t have to deal with the others jumping in or explaining himself to them.

Shiro only barely acknowledged him entering the small kitchen.

“So. Uh.” He leaned on the wall, awkwardly looking away. “How’s your memory this time?”

Shiro raised an eyebrow at him, then pulled back to squint at him. “…Okay, I guess?”

“It’s just.” He shifted weight, and tried and failed to look at Shiro, instead settling on a suddenly fascinating seam between pieces of metal on the far wall. “You know, I know before you were chewed up pretty badly, and there was a lot you didn’t remember or kind of remembered wrong? And I don’t know how much they were doing this time to pull pieces out.” 

Shiro made a brief face of disgust, like he’d just bitten into something rotten. “I don’t think they did as much of that this time. I guess they decided whatever they were doing before hadn’t worked, so they were changing tactics or something.” 

His nerves went a little more on edge. Getting Shiro to talk about what he’d been through when it wasn’t relevant to what was going on and framed in practical terms was like trying to pull a horse through a cat door.

“Changing tactics? Like how?” From the confused look Shiro gave him, he was probably still lousy at feigning innocence (Kolivan had said that if he ever worked with the Blade he was never allowed near infiltration jobs), but Shiro didn’t call him on it.

“Like…” Shiro shook his head, putting a hand to his temples with a grimace. “I don’t know, I guess they didn’t get a chance to get past trying to figure out what hadn’t worked before? I was in and out of their surgery rooms a lot, took the first opening I saw when they weren’t paying as much attention.” He shrugged, and there was discomfort, but it seemed more like frustration and pain than the usual sort of queasy flattening.

And Shiro normally changed subjects or dodged out if it way ahead of something like that. 

“Something wrong?” He still felt like a bit of an ass for asking, even if this time he genuinely wasn’t sure he actually knew what was wrong.

Shiro shook his head. “Just - the weird headaches again. I’ll be fine.” 

Something about it sounded hollow, but it was way more even of a tone than Shiro usually had around the subject. 

“I’ll. Uh. Leave you alone then. Hope you feel better soon.” He turned to duck out, hurrying out of the room.

Shiro didn’t follow him. Shiro had always been good about not forcing him into anything, but if he acted odd at all, Shiro would at least ask, or show up after he’d had time to calm down, sometimes sitting there for a while until he was ready to talk, or finding side subjects to give Keith openings without forcing an answer.

He curled up in a fairly normal routine hiding space in an old observation deck, by himself for several hours.

*************************

It was a buildup of little uncanny valley where he couldn’t avoid the conclusion that this person just wasn’t Shiro.

They seemed to believe they were; he didn’t really see any sign it was intentional, if they were they’d have been doing more to correct when they got things wrong, they’d probably do a better job of ACTING like Shiro instead of the strange uncanny valley where they were just close enough for him to forget and drop guard, then far enough off for missed steps and times where he started to relax into old routines that “Shiro” wasn’t picking up.

“Shiro” wasn’t following when something hit his nerves and he pulled away from everything. “Shiro” was getting almost as frustrated as he was when things snarled and he went right past something Shiro would’ve known about and ended up stepping on one of Keith’s nerves. “Shiro” didn’t react to things that would’ve bothered Shiro, and gave him confused looks when he was stepping up prepared for something that would’ve thrown Shiro off, even if “Shiro” did seem grateful for the attention and the intent.

Some of the worst days were where he dropped guard enough or there’d been time passed and things were relaxed enough to almost lapse back into closer contact and affection, which only lasted until “Shiro” managed to do something off enough from Shiro, or Keith found another missing scar; Keith tensed, and was left with someone that was confused, alarmed, and increasingly visibly shoving off frustration at Keith never being able to give an answer why.

That was finally what broke, and it was the first time “Shiro” followed him when he’d hurried out. 

It was a time window when the others were all away from their rooms involved in their own business elsewhere on the ship; he only made it a few feet from Shiro’s room before “Shiro” was in the hallway.

“Wait!” 

Keith froze, turning on one heel with another step back, swallowing instinct to upgrade “duck out to calm down” to “run”.

“Shiro” raised both hands, but he was frustrated, words coming out sharp and restrained. “Look, I just want to talk. Alright?”

Keith nodded, watching him warily.

“I just want one straight answer out of you, because I can’t do anything with - whatever this is when you’re not telling me anything.” He made a pointed gesture at Keith.

He wasn’t wrong about it being unfair, and Keith knew it, even if it just made Keith feel more cornered even in the middle of an open hallway. Keith swallowed hard and nodded again.

“What am I doing wrong?”

Keith winced. In some respects, there wasn’t a lot really; he’d always been fast to notice and pull back when Keith tensed up or got too uncomfortable, he just…

Didn’t manage much more than that and ‘what’s wrong’ questions that got left immediately. It didn’t help that Keith kept feeling like he was trying to walk on thin ice that gave out under him randomly when he was expecting support, which was less of a ‘doing something wrong’ and more of a ‘not doing’. Or, it seemed more and more like, a ‘not knowing how to do’, as “Shiro” had seemed as confused and frustrated by not seeming to have a clue what was going on with Keith as Keith was with forgetting that he wasn’t dealing with Shiro and “Shiro” managing to regularly find the most well-meaning way to make things worse. 

He wasn’t actually thinking as much about what he was saying.

“You’re not Shiro,” he blurted out, and realized his mistake a beat after; he’d had a funny sense that confronting the charade head on would only end badly.

“I - what?” Not-Shiro took a half step back, staring at him like he’d lost his mind. 

Well, he’d made the mistake; there was nothing left to do but commit to it and see it through. “You’re not Shiro.” He closed his eyes for a moment, pulling straighter. “I don’t know what they did or what’s going on here, but you don’t act like him. You don’t make awful jokes about dying, you remember to eat without me or Coran reminding you, you actually sleep on your own, you’ll actually try to talk about whatever happened with the Galra, you have no idea what you’re doing trying to be him, you don’t check up on me when I’m avoiding things, you don’t even know HOW to talk to me, and you don’t even have the right scars.” 

“I. I’m.” Not-Shiro shook his head, a little too fast, like he was trying to get rid of something. “That isn’t - that can’t be right, I’m not, I’m…” 

He’d gone off-balance, good hand covering half of his face and pressed against his temples.

Weird headaches.

Weird headaches that’d been there when he first arrived and then wore off, except when Keith asked about what happened with the Galra. 

Keith had just fucked up worse than he’d expected.

He took a couple steps forward, putting a hand out, then froze, realizing that maybe that wasn’t such a safe place to be. “I didn’t mean - you’re not him but - you’re still looking out for everyone, you’ve had a hundred chances to hurt us and didn’t, you don’t have to be - whatever they were trying to do!”

He was really bad at this, he knew it, and this actually was a case where his life might depend on it.

“I’m…” Not-Shiro pulled a step back away from him, voice suddenly gone to a quiet rasp. “Go away…” 

Of course the Galra wouldn’t have any reason to leave the ruse intact if it was discovered.

“Look, if you can just - stay with me, we can get Pidge and Hunk, they’ll figure something out, alright?” And he couldn’t really turn his back or leave the guy alone now; who knew what direction he’d go or who else might run into him with less warning if Keith left now. 

Even if he wasn’t sure what to do; he didn’t actually want to HURT the guy, who was thoroughly one of the victims here - he didn’t want to be where he was. He tapped the clip on his collar; this was a bad time to be out of armor. “Pidge get back to our rooms I need you now.” 

He cut the line before she could ask, the “Keith what’s-“ faint and cut off. Pidge would be able to figure out what to do.

And Pidge had the bayard that would work for disabling someone without hurting them. 

Not-Shiro was still, breathing hard, leaning against the wall heavily.

“Pidge is coming, alright? We’ll figure out a way to fix this.”

“Just go…,” Not-Shiro hissed through his teeth.

“I can’t leave you alone like this.” It’d come out stern, but he was leaning in a little, to try to put a hand on the clone’s shoulder, maybe try to give some kind of contact to anchor him.

The reaction was fast and the opposite of what he’d meant; it was pure reflex to yank back and dodge on hearing the noise of the prosthetic powering up, violet light carving through the air where he’d just been standing. The clone’s face was a frustrated snarl that was only half focused.

He was as fast as Shiro, fast enough that Keith was hard pressed to keep ahead of him; he hadn’t known how to talk to Keith, but he sure as Hell knew enough to be almost predicting Keith’s attempts at avoiding him. 

But it was off, some of it a moment too slow, occasional brief pauses, and Keith was more convinced than ever that he didn’t want to be here and wasn’t a voluntary weapon. 

“You have to keep fighting it!” It was a desperate attempt, some little shred of hope that the clone could get enough mental purchase to block whatever Keith had accidentally triggered.

All it did was leave Keith hesitating at the wrong time; a moment later he was slammed against the wall, feet off the ground, the prosthetic wrapped around his throat with the violet energy searing into his skin.

He kicked out with a choked scream, only barely stopping the reflex to try to grab the metal wrist; whatever power ran through the prosthetic would’ve just meant burned hands to go with it. 

He should’ve been dead. He’d seen that prosthetic carve through drones effortlessly. 

Even if the clone was breathing hard and he could feel metal fingers shaking around his neck, it was tight enough to be hard to breathe even without the burning; he should’ve been dead immediately, but he wouldn’t last long through this, either. 

He caught the sound of the doors opening and a bayard being summoned somewhere around where he blacked out.

*******************

Pidge hadn’t realized she could summon the bayard out of armor. 

After the other two had both hit the ground, she realized she hadn’t even tried to ask what was going on, but something about the smell of burning flesh had short circuited everything except combat reflexes and the need to neutralize a threat. 

Now she was left with rattled nerves, adrenaline, and no idea what she’d just interrupted.

Shiro was unconscious on the ground; the prosthetic had deactivated when he’d passed out. She’d never actually stuck around to find out how long it took someone to wake up after she’d knocked them out with the bayard. Until he woke back up, asking him what’d happened was out. 

Keith was also unconscious and not moving, which led to her hurrying to check for a pulse, then freezing and deciding against putting her hand against already damaged scorchmarks and just-forming blisters. That left fumbling for first aid training and floundering, putting her head against his chest to listen.

He was breathing, his chest was moving faintly, there was a heartbeat. 

Keith wasn’t dead. Keith was, however, really badly injured. Keith had also known something was wrong, because he’d radioed for help. She wasn’t sure if he’d called for her specifically because of knowing she had the bayard that could disable someone nonlethally the easiest, or if there was something else he wanted her to fix, but right now “Pidge can stop someone without killing them” was the most likely answer. 

Shiro had tried to kill Keith, and Keith had realized it was likely to happen in time to call for help. 

Shiro would not kill Keith. Not on his own. It was obvious their relationship had gotten suddenly rocky, but it wasn’t ‘homicidal’ rocky. It wasn’t even really ‘loud arguments or anything that might lead to concerns of violence’ rocky. It was just ‘not getting along well suddenly’ rocky. She’d never asked. Hunk and Lance said Keith wouldn’t talk about it and Shiro wasn’t sure what was wrong with Keith. Allura said the same, and that the mice had no idea what was going on either. 

Shiro had, however, just escaped the Galra again. Ulaz was probably the entire explanation for why his arm hadn’t contained any malicious code before, and honestly, the technician working on the arm previously being a spy on their side was probably the reason something like this hadn’t happened before. 

So her working theory was that they’d gone through and “fixed” whatever Ulaz had been ordered to do and “forgotten” to include, which meant that Shiro could randomly and completely against his will still be a threat. 

Keith was badly hurt and needed tended to, and they needed to do … something to make sure whatever had just happened didn’t happen again; Shiro would forgive them when he was lucid and himself again, she was sure.

“Coran? We’re … going to need the healing pods. And uh… Lance, Hunk? Could you guys come down here for a minute? I really need help.”

*************************

The others were left without answers while Keith was healing, although Coran was often staring at the screens for the pods, frowning deeply and not giving explanation. 

Something about his “I don’t know” wasn’t quite right, but he didn’t want to answer yet, and he was smart enough to switch screens whenever Pidge or Hunk got too close to whatever had him unsettled. He was agreeing with Pidge’s assessment that it was a better idea to keep Shiro unconscious until Keith was awake to explain what had happened, even if that left most of the others uneasy. 

Keith didn’t heal clean; he came out of the pod with the scarred imprint of a hand around his neck and everyone closing around him to catch him as he stumbled, a mess of concerned hugs and worried fussing that was almost disorienting. They managed to herd him to a bench, all hovering close by while Coran kept an eye on the monitors.

There was awkward silence growing.

Allura was the one who finally broke it. “Pidge informed us of as much as she should, but … she didn’t know much for certain.”

She had her hands folded in front of her, watching him with ‘what happened’ not even really needing to be said.

He stretched his jaw, half testing if it felt like talking was an option; his voice felt rusty and off. “I screwed up.”

Allura tilted her head, and Lance shifted weight uncomfortably where he was leaning on Hunk. 

“It’s not Shiro. His scars are wrong, a lot of things are wrong. He didn’t know. He - wanted to know what he was doing wrong, caught me off guard and I. Blurted out that he wasn’t Shiro.”

There was a moment and everyone else turned to look at Coran - Pidge and Hunk first, Lance and Allura a beat after.

Coran stiffened straighter, worrying at his moustache. “It didn’t show up on anything before - almost like whoever was responsible had planned to fool our systems.” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the readouts. “But after - whatever happened, it was a little hard to miss, I mean, the biosignature energy is almost identical but the pattern’s off, the damage and tampering is all different, and there’s none of the imprint from the bond with the Black Lion, either, beyond a little bit of faint residue.”

Lance raised an eyebrow, pulling back and looking from Coran to Keith. “So the Galra made some kind of weird clone spy and you figured out something was off and that’s what your whole weird breakup was, then he tried to kill you when he realized you knew something was up?” 

Keith shook his head.

“…You knew it wasn’t Shiro, you figured it out and told him you knew, and then he tried to kill you.” Pidge motioned at the scars around his neck. 

Keith frowned, grimacing and hunching his shoulders. “He didn’t know he wasn’t Shiro. I told him. He got another weird headache but worse. Told me to go away when I was calling for you. Tried not to kill me.”

Hunk gave him a dubious look. “Keith, buddy, I hate to break it to you, but choking you half to death and burning a handprint into your throat is trying to kill you.”

Keith glared up. “You know what that hand can do. He was fighting it. Would’ve taken my head clean off before I knew it’d happened if he wasn’t.” 

Hunk wrinkled his nose with a displeased noise, narrowing his eyes, but he didn’t argue - at least not that minute. 

“So what we rescued was some sort of - imperfect clone that managed to still capture the Black Lion’s attention briefly, who was seemingly unaware and unwilling.” Allura frowned, rubbing the bridge of her nose. 

Keith nodded. 

“Well, I guess we can see if we can work with the Castle’s systems to figure out how to mess with whatever programming you triggered,” Pidge offered, fussing with her glasses. “I mean, my first guess for what’d happened was just that there was always supposed to be something like this, but Ulaz had ‘mysteriously forgotten’ to put it into Shiro’s arm or tampered with it, and with Ulaz gone, they’d be free to ‘fix’ it… so we have at least one good theory for a place to look for it.” 

“And if it turns out there’s no weird programming, or we take it out and he still tries to kill someone?” Hunk shot the other tube a suspicious glance; Keith glared at him. 

Allura raised a hand before Keith could say anything. “Let’s … deal with deciphering what exactly we’re dealing with first; I’m sure the two of you can get a better understanding of that given time. If this is someone unwilling, then I would rather not turn on someone who is also a victim of their cruelties.” 

“You know there’s a bigger problem here, right?”

They all stopped to look at Lance.

“If he’s not Shiro, then - where the Hell is Shiro?”

No-one had an answer, and while Keith was sure he wasn’t the only one who could think of theories, nobody wanted to say it right then.

He got hovered over in the infirmary a little longer, although everyone started slowly trickling out as things settled, until eventually he was left with Coran and Plachu, then just Plachu, riding on his shoulder as he walked back to his room.

He sank into the bed, idly petting the mouse with a couple fingers after Plachu settled on his chest; he’d learned long ago that talking to the mice to sort his thoughts was a bad idea unless he also wanted to be talking to Allura. 

It wasn’t Shiro. He wanted to believe the Black Lion wouldn’t put Shiro where the Galra would get to him again; the Lion had never been able to give him a clear answer to what had happened to Shiro, and he’d definitely asked, more than once, after she’d decided to have him take Shiro’s place. 

At least, he wanted to believe the lion wouldn’t have put Shiro where the Galra could get to him intentionally. Zarkon meddling somehow or the Galra getting lucky and finding wherever he’d ended up was still a possibility; he could be back in their claws again, imprisoned and experimented on, and they had no way of knowing.

He also wanted to believe Shiro wasn’t dead, but he couldn’t even be sure on that, either, the way he’d vanished with only the bayard left behind. 

He was trying not to worry at the scar, either, or think about how Shiro would react when he saw it, if they found him; he knew Shiro worried enough about what the Galra had made him into without Keith permanently having a reminder of what that prosthetic could do if it were used to hurt him. 

If they found him.

**Author's Note:**

> (I know I kind of failed at any kind of Halloween theme, unless "putting a foot in horror genre" counts, but I hope this worked for the prompt!)


End file.
